Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  “Stealth mode activat— Stealth mode deactivated.”

  “Not good, baby!” the man said, shaking his head. “Not good at all.”

  Chatine ground her teeth. This man was making no sense whatsoever. Nothing about this whole situation was making any sense. And he was still upside down.

  She slowly pushed herself to a sitting position, seeing her surroundings clearly for the first time. There were glowing screens. More rows of dials. More riveted walls and small metal cabinets. Chatine glanced up and took in the stars again. Except she now realized she was looking at them through a plate of curved plastique. The vast, scuffed window above her stretched all the way down in front of the young man at the control panel, and through it, she spotted the burning wreckage of the Trésor tower roof. Her heart immediately sank. She was still on Bastille. Tucked away behind a water tank, from the looks of it, yet definitely still on this Sol-forsaken moon.

  And this ship didn’t look like any ship Chatine had ever been in before. Not that riding in one combatteur and one prisoner transport voyageur made her an expert on the subject, but there was something about the controls. They felt old somehow. Like the entire ship was made up of parts she could find at Monsieur Ferraille’s junk stall in the Marsh. Relics of a lost world.

  “Okay, I’m going to try something a little extreme,” the man said, staring intently at the controls in front of him, “so bear with me, baby.” He gripped a metallic toggle with pinched fingers, flicked it down and then back up.

  Chatine felt the floor beneath her rattle, and then the entire ship shook violently. She braced her hands on either side of her for balance. And that’s when her gaze fell upon her left leg. Her prison uniform was ripped open, and there was a gash just below her knee cap. Bloodied and deep and oozing. The sight of it nearly made her faint again. She took deep breaths to push away the curtaining blackness and then gently prodded at the skin around the open wound.

  Still, no pain.

  How strange.

  “Did you paralyze me?” she asked, finally finding her voice. But as soon as the question was out of her mouth, she knew it was wrong. She’d been paralyzed by enough rayonettes to know what it felt like, and this wasn’t it. Her leg wasn’t numb and cold. It was tingly and … warm.

  There was that word again. It was so foreign to her. Chatine had spent her entire life freezing in the Frets and then on Bastille. This was the first time she could ever remember feeling so Sol-damn warm.

  Without warning, the man—presumably the pilote of this ship—leapt back over Chatine and collapsed down in the capitaine’s seat again. “Paralyzeurs? No way. We don’t get near that toxic stuff. Too much of that and it starts to do permanent damage. Messes with your brain.”

  Chatine wondered if that’s exactly what was happening to her. Too much paralyzeur in her system from years of being shot at by bashers and cyborg inspecteurs, and now her brain was hallucinating being inside some ancient-looking ship with a wild-eyed, chisel-jawed man flipping switches and saying things like, “This is for the whole baguette, baby. Come on. Make Papa proud.”

  A red light on the panel flickered on. “Stealth mode activated,” said the breathy voice.

  The man flung his hands into the air. “And we have engagement. That’s right. Who is the best pilote in all of Laterre?” But then, a second later, the light flickered off and his entire body seemed to deflate. “Okay, not me, apparently.”

  “Stealth mode deactivated.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” the man snapped in the general direction of the ship’s ceiling. “You don’t need to rub it in!” Then, a moment later, he hung his head and, looking ashamed, added in a soft voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I don’t want to fight. Let’s try this again.”

  Chatine, once again, glanced around the empty compartment. “Who are you talking to?” she asked.

  The man pulled his gaze away from the controls long enough to flash her a strange look. “The ship,” he said as if it were the only rational answer to any question.

  Chatine stared at him, trying to gauge whether or not he was pranking her. “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “You talk to a ship?”

  “I don’t talk to a ship. I talk to my ship. We’re inseparable. We do everything together. She’s my baby. Isn’t that right, baby?”

  The ship remained silent.

  The man snorted and pointed at a red light on the console that was blinking erratically. “She got injured when I pulsed the power on Bastille, and now I can’t get stealth mode to stay activated.” He reached out and caressed the console. “Poor baby.”

  Chatine stared incredulously. “Okay.”

  The man was suddenly out of his chair again, darting to the back of the cockpit. He flipped open a panel on the wall and shone a small flashlight at the tangle of wires inside. His lips tugged into a frown. “Hmm. So it’s not the reactor. It’s definitely not the power cell. It could be …” He switched his flashlight to the other hand before pulling a wire from a port and studying the ends. “Nope. Not the thermal matrix.”

  Chatine felt another warm rush of tingles shoot up her leg. She glanced down and curiously prodded at the skin around the giant gash again, marveling at how she felt nothing but that soothing glow. “So, why doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Oh, it will,” the man replied distractedly as he continued to poke at wires inside the panel. “Just not for a while. You got a nasty shrapnel wound there. I pumped you full of goldenroot. The strong kind. A lot of it. You’ll be feeling pretty good for a few hours.”

  “Goldenroot? What on Laterre is goldenroot?”

  “Just a little remedy we use. Made with Maman’s finest herbs. Works wonders on menstrual cramps.” He paused and turned to add, “So I’ve been told.”

  “How did I get in here?” Chatine asked.

  The man closed the panel and returned to his chair in the center of the cockpit. “I saw you go down. On the roof. We don’t normally get involved, but I was hovering nearby and we have a kind of code back at the camp: If you can help without getting yourself killed, do it. So I did.”

  Herbs?

  Camp?

  Something familiar was tickling the fuzzy edges of Chatine’s memory. She could only think of one kind of people who lived in a camp.

  She let out a gasp. “Are you a Défecteur?”

  The man’s arms fell limply to his sides, and he spun his chair away from the console to glare at her. “First of all, that name is offensive. Secondly, we didn’t defect from society. We simply chose not to partake in it. There’s a difference. One that the Regime clearly doesn’t understand.”

  Chatine’s thoughts were whirling.

  The Défecteurs have ships? With stealth mode?

  “And thirdly—”

  “Incoming explosif detected,” the ship interrupted. “Impact in five seconds.”

  The pilote spun his chair back to the console. “Discussion to be continued.” He maneuvered a series of dials and then took control of the ship’s throttle and yanked it hard to the left. The ship, which was hovering a few mètres above what was left of the roof, sliced through the air.

  Out the front window, Chatine watched a beam of light whiz by, just narrowly missing the ship. The air around them still seemed to sizzle, as though the explosif had gone right through the cockpit.

  “Sols!” Chatine cried out, grabbing onto the first thing she saw. Unfortunately, it was the pilote’s leg. She quickly moved her grip to the base of his chair. “They’re firing at us!”

  “Yeah, that tends to happen when you try to break someone out of prison.”

  “Incoming explosif detect—” the ship began to say, but there wasn’t even time for her to finish. The pilote wrenched the contrôleur, and Chatine was knocked back as the ship leapt into the air to avoid another hit.

  “Might be best to strap in,” he advised. He punched another button on his console, and a moment later, a narrow jump se
at unfolded from the wall next to Chatine. Favoring her good leg, she quickly maneuvered into it and fastened the harnesses around her, just as another streak of light crackled across the sky. The ship pitched to the left.

  “Can’t you do something!?” Chatine had to shout to be heard over the thunder of relentless explosions outside the window.

  “I told you,” he replied breathlessly with another fierce yank on the throttle. “The stealth mode is on the fritz. Otherwise we would be hidden from these clochards.”

  “Well, you need to fix it!” Chatine yelled.

  “I’m only one person!” the man yelled back. “Do you want to dodge Ministère explosifs while I continue trying to fix the ship?”

  “I—” Chatine started to say.

  “That was a rhetorical question. Like I’d ever let you fly my ship.” The pilote swerved hard to the right and Chatine slammed against her harness.

  “Then, why don’t you fly us out of here already? Why are we just hovering here like sitting ducks?”

  The pilote sighed. “Because I can’t get past Bastille’s outer shields without stealth mode. We’ll be destroyed. Wait! I have an idea! Can you reach the emergency access panel?”

  “The what?”

  His jaw tightened as he spun the ship in a half circle. Fiery sparks exploded outside the window. “The little red door!”

  Chatine glanced next to her and noticed a small red panel cut into the side of the hull. “Why don’t you just call it the little red door?”

  “Because it’s—” the pilote huffed. “Never mind. Can you reach it?”

  “Yes.” Chatine strained against her harness until she could reach the panel. She dug her fingernails into the groove and yanked it open. “Got it.”

  “Good.” The pilote kept his gaze out the front window at the combatteurs that whooshed and buzzed around them like insects. “Do you see a large lever?”

  Chatine grabbed the lever with her extended hand, ready to yank it down. “Yes!”

  “Whatever you do, don’t pull that lever!”

  Chatine pulled her hand away as though she’d been burned. The pilote chuckled. “Just kidding. Pull that lever.”

  “I’m going to kill you when this is over. You do realize that, right?”

  The pilote shrugged as he successfully dodged another incoming explosif. “Risk I take for picking up a runaway Bastille convict, I guess. Are you going to pull the lever or not?”

  “What does it do?” Chatine asked, now suddenly distrustful.

  “It’s a system override.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Well, you know what they say. When all else fails, reboot.”

  “What does that even mean?” Chatine asked impatiently.

  “We have to shut down the whole system and restart it. It’s risky but it might be the only way to reset the stealth management system. The only problem is, I won’t be able to steer the ship when it’s down.”

  Chatine drew her hand away from the lever again. “WHAT? Are you crazy? They’ll shoot us for sure.”

  “The system will only be down for a few seconds. As soon as it’s back up, stealth mode will reengage automatically, and we’ll disappear from their monitors and detection scans.”

  “Okay,” Chatine said, steeling herself and reaching for the lever again. The ship shuddered as another explosif whizzed by.

  “That is, if it works.”

  She pulled back. “If?”

  “Just do it!”

  Chatine took a breath, grabbed for the lever, and thrust it down hard. She felt a low rumbling beneath her as the ship powered down and sunk back onto what was left of the roof. Every light on every panel extinguished, and they were plunged into darkness. Only the stars cast their measly light inside the small cockpit.

  Then, three blinding streaks cracked through the sky like lightning, heading straight toward them.

  Chatine held her breath and shut her eyes. After all of this, after everything she’d done today, she couldn’t believe she was still going to die on Bastille.

  She opened her eyes to see the explosifs coming straight toward them. They were going to crash right through the cockpit window. They were going to slice her in half. She opened her mouth to scream.

  “Stealth mode activated.”

  The lights of the cockpit flickered on, one by one, and Chatine felt a jolt as the pilote took command of the contrôleur again and tore the ship up into the air, banking hard to the left. The explosifs detonated on the roof of the prison in a ball of blazing light.

  Chatine coughed, expelling all the air from her lungs. She stared back at the roof, where a barrage of more explosifs was detonating, combusting nothing but air.

  The pilote let out a whoop of self-congratulation. “Aha! Let’s see how good your aim is now, you stupide Ministère monkeys.”

  “Is it over?” Chatine asked breathlessly.

  “It’s over, baby.”

  Chatine wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or the ship, but at this point she didn’t care.

  The pilote jabbed at his controls and flipped two switches on a panel by his feet.

  “Thrusters initiated,” the ship announced. “Ready for launch.”

  “Better put this on.” The pilote tossed Chatine a large metal clamp and nodded toward her left wrist.

  “What is it?” Chatine asked, turning it around in her hands.

  “It blocks the signal from your Skin. So they can’t track us.”

  Chatine pushed back her sleeve and fastened the heavy, clunky object around her wrist. Despite its weight, she felt instantly comforted.

  The young man turned to check that her Skin was fully concealed before flashing Chatine a sparkling, roguish grin. “Okay, then. Let’s blow this joint. I, for one, am getting very tired of this view.”

  - CHAPTER 19 - MARCELLUS

  IT WAS ALMOST THE MIDDLE of the night when Marcellus finally made it back to the Grand Palais. He’d been wandering the streets of Ledôme for over an hour. Like a lost planet without an orbit, he didn’t know where to go. What to do. How to escape those gruesome images: Chatine being blasted into the air by an explosive, and Mabelle’s mangled body lying on that tower roof.

  He staggered between the sculpted hedges and immaculate flowerbeds of the Palais gardens, before entering the Palais through the back terrace. He had just reached the base of the imperial staircase when his TéléCom dinged in his ear and he heard the familiar chime of a Universal Alert starting.

  Confused, Marcellus unfolded his TéléCom and startled when he saw not his grandfather’s face on the screen, but Pascal Chaumont.

  “Good evening, fellow Laterrians. I apologize for the late-night interruption, but this good news could not wait. Patriarche Lyon Paresse is pleased to announce that, as of this evening, Citizen Rousseau, prisoner of Bastille and former Vangarde leader, is dead.”

  Marcellus angrily flicked the alert from his screen and returned his TéléCom to his pocket. Apparently, the Patriarche couldn’t even wait until morning to do the very thing the general advised him not to do.

  He pounded up the steps of the imperial staircase and stalked down the corridors to the south wing. He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to lock the door. Shut the drapes. Shroud himself in darkness.

  He rounded the corner and approached his rooms at the end of the hallway. But it wasn’t until he lifted his hand to the biometric lock that he noticed the door was already ajar.

  Marcellus froze.

  Had he forgotten to shut his door when he’d left?

  Then Marcellus heard something inside. A scraping. A rustling. The squeak of furniture across polished floors, followed by a series of thuds and bangs. It sounded like a wild animal was scrounging around his rooms for scraps of food. He crept toward the open door and peered through the crack. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw the ragged, dust-covered coat he’d worn to meet with Mabelle at the copper exploit. The disguise was no longer tucked into the bac
k of his closet, where he’d hidden it. It now lay exposed in the middle of the floor.

  Like it had been dug up.

  Uncovered.

  Found.

  And then came the voice.

  “Keep looking. I know it’s in here somewhere.”

  Every nerve inside Marcellus felt as if it were unraveling. That voice—harsh and gruff and, now thanks to his recent enhancements, disturbingly robotic—was the last voice Marcellus wanted to hear inside his rooms.

  Standing up straighter, he shoved the door open and barged inside. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The state of the room brought Marcellus up short. Every drawer had been opened and emptied. His dressing room was completely torn apart. His bedsheets lay tangled on the ground. Even the paintings had been removed from the walls.

  And just as he suspected, Inspecteur Chacal stood in the middle of the carnage, slapping his metal baton rhythmically against his palm, surveying the debris.

  “Officer Bonnefaçon,” he said with a slight sneer, his circuitry flashing once. “Welcome back. Don’t worry. Just a routine search.”

  “An unauthorized search,” Marcellus growled. “I order you to cease immediately or I will have you arrested for trespassing and disobeying orders from an officer of the Ministère.”

  Marcellus heard a crash and looked over to see that one of Chacal’s deputies had overturned his bedside table and was now rifling through the contents of its small drawer. Furiously, he rushed toward the man. “What on Laterre—”

  But he stopped when something hard was thrust into his stomach. He glanced down to see Chacal had extended his baton, blocking Marcellus’s path.

  “I am not disobeying orders,” the inspecteur said in a chillingly calm tone. “I am following them.”

  Marcellus seethed. “Well, whoever gave you those orders, as Commandeur-in-training, I outrank them.”